I have to warn you, even if you do get your hands on some meat glue so you can try making brick chicken, you’re going to have another problem: smoke. Chang’s fondness for searing on the element and then finishing in the oven works wonders for meat but will set your fire alarm off not once, but three times.

I honestly can’t recall the number of times my fire alarm has gone off while cooking from Momofuku, but I do know that it hasn’t happened with any of my other cooking. I think it has something to do with the smoke build-up that happens in the oven while roasting. Chang must have some crazy exhaust system; I just have a regular exhaust hood. Thankfully, from the looks of it, I don’t think any of the recipes I have left will set the alarm off.

The brick chicken was worth the three alarms: the crispy skin and succulent moist meat were incredibly good. Minus the de-boning of a bird, the recipe is fairly simple. The chicken is seared in a cast-iron pan, roasted in oven and finished with a thyme and garlic butter sauce.

If you haven’t de-boned a chicken before, I say go for it. It’s not as hard as you think, mostly because you’ve probably eaten all the parts of a chicken, so it’s not difficult to visualize where the bones are. I actually kind of like de-boning chicken, which is funny considering I was so scared of the pig’s head.

Part of this dish is the novelty of no bones. Regardless, I think I’m going to have to try making chicken with bones like this sometime soon. It could have been the butter, but this chicken was amazingly moist and tender.

Meat Glue Week is over, but I still have half a sample bag of meat glue sitting in my freezer, so don’t be surprised if sometime soon there’s something strange in the neighbourhood!